


Start With The ABC Of It

by wintergrey



Series: The Blood-Dimmed Tide [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: First Kiss, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-29
Updated: 2014-05-29
Packaged: 2018-01-26 23:29:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1706531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wintergrey/pseuds/wintergrey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"There are things he's bad at, though, and one of them is taking a hint about anything. Bucky shouldn't be surprised. Right now he's picking Steve up out of the narrow slot between two dumpsters, a space so small Bucky's shoulders don't fit into it even though he's still not quite filled out."</p><p> <i>Brooklyn, Fall of 1941</i></p><p>Song title from <a href="http://www.traditionalmusic.co.uk/1940s-top-songs/teach-me-tonight(anne-shelton).htm">here</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Start With The ABC Of It

**Author's Note:**

> ** Life Lessons:**   
>  [Start With The ABC Of It](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1706531)   
>  [Down to the XYZ Of It](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1719581)   
>  [Teach Me Tonight](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3897277/)
> 
> * * *

_Brooklyn, Fall of 1941_

Steve Rogers is good at a surprising number of things for such a little guy. Sure, he's not athletic and he's kind of asthmatic but he's really, really smart. He's clever with his hands. He's a really good artist—Bucky peeked at his sketchbook once when Steve was in the john. Really good.

There are things he's bad at, though, and one of them is taking a hint about anything. Bucky shouldn't be surprised. Right now he's picking Steve up out of the narrow slot between two dumpsters, a space so small Bucky's shoulders don't fit into it even though he's still not quite filled out.

"You knew that guy was gonna blow up," he says, finally getting both hands in the front of Steve's jacket and pulling.

"Well, yeah. But it gave that little guy time to get away."

Little guy. The little guy was bigger than Steve. Smaller than Bucky, sure, but not that small. Probably younger than both of them though, by a lot of years.

"Steve..."

"Don't say it," Steve grunts as Bucky finally gets him to his feet. "It wasn't like anyone else was gonna do it and you weren't there."

Wasn't there because he was off preening for some girls, and Bucky felt guilty about that. Worse because it wasn't even about the girls. It was because it was the only time he could really... do that. Show off. Without being obvious.

"Sorry." Bucky digs around in his pocket and comes up with a crumpled-but-probably-clean handkerchief. Sorry but not sorry. He wipes blood off of Steve's upper lip and chin.

"Hell, Bucky, I'm not a baby." Steve scowls, splitting his lip further, as he reaches for the hanky.

"Yeah, well, you can't see yourself so you don't know what's dirty." Bucky takes Steve's chin in his hand.

Just for a minute, he has Steve to himself and he can look without being afraid of getting caught. Steve has blue eyes like stars, except that stars aren't blue, and a mouth that's not a girl's mouth, it's better. It's soft and red and curving and on the rare occasions he smiles, his white teeth flash and Bucky's heart does this flip in his chest that he used to be afraid everyone could see.

He's got a lot of theories on why Steve does this kind of thing, getting into scrapes. Some of them have to do with the way he can't stand up to people who hassle his mom, like the beat cop who’s always leaning in too close to talk to her and the butcher who keeps up that flirting that puts even Bucky's teeth on edge.

The world is a lousy place when you're weak, when you're beholden to people. It's a lousy place in general, and Steve just wants to make it better for everyone and somehow he came up with doing it by making things worse for himself. Bucky wishes he'd stop.

Steve thinks Bucky’s brave because he's going to sign up but that's not brave. Brave would be saying something to Steve right now. Bucky doesn't know what he'd do if the Army ever said yes to Steve. He'd... he'd do something. He'd make something up.

He'd have to be brave then. He'd go and explain it.

_Look, you can't do this. You can't take him. You don't get it, he's smart and he's talented and he's better than this. Better than me. He's going to be something great some day, not just some schmuck. He just has to get out of here and find out what it is. He can't come back in a box. He has to be here... has to be here when I come home._

"You okay?" Steve's looking up at him, all brow-wrinkled and worried.

"Yeah, I'm just... I'm just thinking."

"That's a first." Steve gives Bucky a cheeky grin that gets him in the chest. "Unless it was about a girl."

"Nah. Just... stuff. Being brave. You're brave but you're kind of dumb, Rogers." He wipes a smudge of alley-slime off Steve's forehead, then tries to get a green streak of it out of his fine, blond hair.

"More stupid than brave." Steve prods at his white teeth with his pink tongue and for some reason that makes a flush creep up Bucky's neck. "Or they keep telling me. You, though. At least you have what it takes to back it up."

"Me?" Bucky can't help laughing at that. "I'm yellow all the way through. Don't get fooled." He steps back and lets Steve go, reluctantly. "There, now you look like hell instead of like bloody hell."

"You're not yellow." Steve's face falls. He looks hurt, like Bucky hit him instead of just telling the truth. "You're enlisting and—"

"Doesn't take any courage to do the thing everyone expects you to do." Bucky tucks the hanky away inside his jacket. "Brave is something else. Sometimes it's stupid but it's never easy. You taking on a guy twice your size is brave. Me enlisting, that's easy."

For most of the long walk back, Bucky is kind of afraid Steve's mad at him because Steve doesn't say anything. They're almost home, cruising slowly between islands of yellow light and the river of shadows that runs through the city streets at night, when Steve finally speaks.

"What would you do? You know, if you were brave," he wants to know.

"Don't worry about it."

Bucky lets them into his apartment. It smells like cats, everything's yellow with age and cigarette smoke, and sounds like it does every Friday night: the low hum of radios playing too loud and the endless rise and fall of voices arguing somewhere. Still, it's nicer than where Steve and his mom live in a one bedroom place so small that Steve sleeps on the couch because there's no room for a fold-out. It's why Steve sleeps over so much.

"You can tell me." Steve follows him in. Bucky's folks are out at the Bingo and then they'll probably play darts after. Bucky knows that if he checks there'll be two covered plates of leftovers in the fridge for them—he's not hungry but Steve needs to eat. "I won't tell. Not like I have anyone to tell, as you've probably noticed."

"Come on, come wash your face." Bucky sheds his jacket and hangs it up to avoid a talking-to before he heads into the little bathroom back by his room. Cold water belches out rusty, then clear, when he turns on the tap.

"What would you do?" Steve asks again while he's washing his face. His voice is all muffled and he's leaving red streaks on the pink washcloth. They've been doing this since back when they had to turn the waste bin over for Steve to stand on so he could reach the taps. "Like, join the ballet or something? How bad can it be?"

“I’d kiss you.” The words just come out and then Bucky stops breathing. He’s leaning back on the towel rod like his mom always tells him not to only this time it’s because if he doesn’t, he’ll fall down.

Is this what being brave is like? Is Steve this scared when he goes after some punk in the street for picking on someone else? Like he can’t breathe and he’s going to puke and he just wants to run and run and run forever except his knees are shaking and his muscles are all turned to ice water?

It’s harder than Bucky ever imagined. He wasn’t even this scared when the guys dared him to stand on the rail of a twelfth floor balcony one night in January, with the iron slick and frozen under the worn-smooth soles of his old boots and the black ground seeming as far below him as the white moon was above.

“You could,” Steve says, with a voice that sounds a million miles away because of how the blood is rushing in Bucky’s ears. “You could do that.” His face is scrubbed as pink as the cloth and his bangs are dark with dampness and tiny ruby beads of blood are glistening on his lip where he pulled it open again. He doesn’t look scared at all.

Bucky lets go of the towel he was clenching behind him and the towel rod stops creaking as he leans forward. He takes Steve’s face in his hands the way he only ever gets to after Steve gets himself beaten up—sometimes Bucky wonders if he lets Steve get into scrapes just so he can touch—then leans in. He’s still scared but it’s the thrilling kind of scared and not the terrible kind, it’s like the roll and drop in his stomach as he launches himself off a footbridge and into the summer sky before falling into the gritty-green sun-warmed water below.

Kissing Steve is like jumping only without landing because there’s no up or down. There’s just the copper tang of Steve’s blood like a bright penny in Bucky’s mouth and the soft press of one of Steve’s hands on his chest. Bucky doesn’t kiss him too hard or too deep or too long because he knows Steve’s never kissed anyone, not on the mouth, not for real, and maybe he doesn’t like it—maybe he doesn’t like Bucky—and the last thing Bucky wants is to ruin his first kiss.

“Don’t stop.” Steve’s voice is so sure and steady. He’s not scared. He’s the bravest person Bucky knows. He closes his hand in the thin fabric of Bucky’s T-shirt. “You don’t have to stop.”

“I do.” Bucky knows it because right now he wants to push Steve up against the wall or down on the floor and press up against him and kiss him until they can’t breathe, until one or both of them end up with wet, sticky pants and a chest full of shame.

He can’t think of anything he wants to do more except things he’s only heard of in crude slang terms or seen in dog-eared and dirty Tijuana bibles, things he isn’t really sure people actually do—or at least he isn’t sure that two guys do them except how different can it be? That’s something he’s turned over and over in his head at night when he thinks no one else is awake and he can worry about the logistics of it in the dark before he has to stop thinking and touch himself until he’s not rock hard and aching anymore.

“I do because you do stupid shit trying to do the right thing for people.” Bucky accidentally catches a glimpse of himself in the mirror and for some reason he looks like he’s been crying, his eyes are so bright and his cheeks are so flushed. “You get yourself hurt.”

“It’s worth it,” Steve says. He’s standing there like a paper cut-out of a soldier, shoulders back, collarbones so sharp they could almost slice through his shirt, chest so thin Bucky can actually see his heart beating through his flesh and ribs. It’s because Steve’s heart is so big, he thinks. It’s not fair God put it in such a fragile body. “But you’d never hurt me, Bucky. You could, but you don’t. You’d never hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“So you want me to kiss you again?” Bucky can’t look straight at him, has to look through the dense fringe of his own eyelashes to hide his fear and shame and wanting.

“Yeah. I do, if that’s what you want. I really do. You’re bad at taking a hint, you know, Bucky. I’d have thought you’d noticed by now.” Steve doesn’t look away, even though his cheeks look as hot as Bucky’s feel. “But you don’t have to, I know you like—”

Bucky doesn’t let him finish.

 

 


End file.
